Tag Archives: languages

Cockroaches, like aphids, tend to get a bad press, the former as objects of disgust, the latter as pests. This is of course because our perception of cockroaches is heavily influenced by the scuttling, slithering and susurrus images that haunt our memories from watching too many reality TV shows and horror films*.

Cockroaches are members of the superorder, Dictyoptera and are placed in the order Blattodea, (derived from the Latin, blatta, an insect that shuns light) which, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, along with the termites (inward et al., 2007). When I was a student termites had their own Order, Isoptera; molecular biology and DNA studies have a lot to answer for 🙂 There are currently, about 4,600 described species, of which thirty are associated with humans and a mere four which are considered to be pests (Bell et al., 2007); see what I mean about a bad press. They have a global distribution but are mainly associated with the tropics and sub-tropics.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (and whom am I to doubt them?), the name “cockroach” comes from the Spanish word cucaracha, transformed by 1620s English folk etymology (where an unfamiliar word is changed into something more familiar) into “cock” (male bird) and “roach” (a freshwater fish). I find this a little odd. Given that the Romans were trading globally before they colonised England, it seems unbelievable that the Oriental and German cockroaches would not have made it to the British Isles and become a familiar pest, before the early seventeenth century. That said, Robinson (1870) suggests that according to Gilbert White the Oriental cockroach Periplaneta orientalis, sometimes called the black beetle (e.g. Blatchley, 1892), was not introduced into England until 1790. A reference in Packham (2015) however puts its introduction as 1644, which fits better with the OED’s date of derivation of the word. I would, despite this, still suggest that the Romans would have been the more likely ones to have brought it to our shores. I think it quite likely that anything that scuttled along the ground and was dark in colour would have been referred to as a black beetle, so my view is that our pestiferous cockroaches have been around much longer. Any sources to prove/disprove this will be welcome.

Our native cockroaches, as opposed to those that have become naturalised, are shy, retiring, quite rare and located mainly in the south of England, where they dwell peacefully among the trees and heather, a situation that has remained largely unchanged for almost 200 years (Stephens, 1835). Their names, except for Ectobius pallidus, seem to indicate an origin from farther afield, or perhaps just reflect the origin of the entomologist who first described them 🙂

Earlier this year I wrote about the debate that rages about the correct way to talk about thrips during which I got distracted and ended up writing about their names in different languages. It turns out that I am not alone in being curious about international insect naming. I have just finished reading Matthew Gandy’s excellent book Moth, where he waxes lyrical about the different names used to describe butterflies and moths around the world. This, of course, made me wonder what aphid would turn up, so armed with dictionaries and Google Translate, I traveled the world to see what I could discover.

There are a lot of languages so I am only going to highlight a few versions of aphid that I found interesting or surprising. According to The Oxford English Dictionary, Linneaus coined the word Aphides, which may (or not) have been inspired by the Ancient Greek ἀφειδής‎ (apheidḗs) meaning unsparing, perhaps in relation to their rapid reproduction and feeding habits. The modern spelling of aphid seems to have come into being after the Second World War, although you could still find aphides being used in the late 1940s (e.g. Broadbent et al., 1948; Kassanis, 1949), and it can still be found in more recent scientific literature where the journal is hosted in a non-English speaking country.

Many aphid names are very obviously based on the modern Latin word coined by Linneaus, although in some countries more than one name can be used, as in the UK where aphid is the technical term but blackfly and green-fly are also commonly used.

Aphide derived names

Albanian afideja

English aphid

French aphide

Hindu एफिड ephid

Portuguese afídio

Spanish áfido

More common are those names that relate to the vague resemblance that aphids have to lice and to their plant feeding habit. The term plant lice to describe aphids was commonly used in the scientific literature up and into the early 1930s (e.g. Mordvilko, 1928; Marcovitch, 1935).

Names linked to the putative resemblance to lice and their plant feeding habit

Bosnian lisna uš uš is louse, lisna derived from leaf

Bulgarian listna vŭshka vŭshka louse, listna plant leaf

Danish bladlaus blad is leaf, laus louse

Dutch bladluis blad is leaf, luis is louse

Estonian lehetäi leht is leaf, tai is louse

German Blattlaus blatt is leaf, laus is louse

Greek pseíra ton fytón louse on plant

Hungarian levéltetű leve is leaf, tetű is louse

Icelandic lús or blaðlús lús is louse, blað is plant

Latvian laputs lapa is, uts is louse

Norwegian bladlus blad is plant, lus is louse

Swedish bladlus as for Norwegian

If you draw siphunculi on to a louse and add a cauda to the rear end you can just about see the resemblance.

Louse with added siphunculi and cauda

Names based on the premise that aphids resemble fleas

French puceron puce is flea

Spanish pulgón pulga is flea

Flea with cauda and siphunclus, but still only a poor imitation of the real thing. Even with added aphid features I don’t see the resemblance 🙂

In Turkish, aphid is yaprak biti which roughly translates to leaf biter. There are then a few languages where there appears to be no connection with their appearance or feeding habit.

Other names for aphid

Basque zorri

Chinese 蚜 Yá

Filipino dapulak

Finnish kirva

Lithuanian Mszyca

Tamil அசுவினி Acuviṉi

Welsh llyslau

Xhosa zomthi

In Lithuanian, where aphid is Mszyca, which looks like it might be derived from Myzus, an important aphid genus, aphid also translates to amaras which means blight. In the case of a heavy aphid infestation, this is probably an apt description. I was also amused to find that whilst the Welsh have a name for aphid, Scottish Gaelic does not.

My all-time favourite, and one for which I can find no explanation at all, is dolphin. According to Curtis (1845), aphids on cereals in some counties of England were known as wheat dolphins. I was also able to trace the use of this name back to the previous century (Marsham, 1798), but again with no explanation why this name should have arisen.

Curtis, J. (1845) Observations on the natural history and economy of various insects etc., affecting the corn-crops, including the parasitic enemies of the wheat midge, the thrips, wheat louse, wheat bug and also the little worm called Vibrio. Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 6, 493-518.

Marcovitch, S. (1935) Experimental evidence on the value of strip farming as a method for the natural control of injurious insects with special reference to plant lice. Journal of Economic Entomology, 28, 62-70.

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